Tag Archives: Keep Going

The Future Starts Slow

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Hello Tash Appreciators,

I came across a Nike advert called “just do it – possibilities”.  It’s pretty good:


It looks at various every-day people who are starting out in sport and asks what’s stopping them from taking their participation to the next level. Like many Nike adverts, it challenges the amateur to ask more of themselves: to run further, jump higher and fight harder than they have in the past or ever thought they could.

The choice of music used in the advert is interesting too. The song is called “The Future Starts Slow” by The Kills, and I think it hits the nail on the head – if you want a future filled with success, you’re going to have to expend a lot of time and energy in getting there. In sport, and life generally, it’s often the initial stages that are the most difficult as, although it never gets easy, once you’ve started to get better you can least look back and see the progress.

This week was also the 50th anniversary of Dr King’s “I have a dream” speech. TF has covered this in the past but it was a long time ago and I’m sure you’ll forgive me for coming back to it.

The most famous part of the speech (the “I have a dream” part) is towards the end but, at the beginning, Dr King talks about President Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. He says that, one hundred years after the Proclamation that slavery was to end, the “black man” (I’ve changed the words used) “is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land”. He says that the Proclamation was a cheque which has not been cashed and he talks about now being the time for the bank of justice to pay out.

I guess that the speed at which ambitions are reached is directly proportionate to the scale of what you’re trying to achieve. You can go from being able to run a mile to running a marathon in a few months, but even Abraham Lincoln’s efforts couldn’t speed up a civil rights movement that took 100 years to give minorities even a semblance of equality.

All of that being said, fifty years after Dr King’s speech, we can look back and see real progress not just in the US but around the world. Sure, there is a vast amount of work to be done in the fight for equality but the future now doesn’t seem quite so far away and it’s coming more quickly all the time. I guess all we can do is think “we’ve come this far, why can’t we go further?”

I’ll leave you with Dr King and his superlative Tash. Can it be any surprise that such a man chose to wear one:

Tash Friday 30:8:13

Have a great weekend folks!

#keepgoing

P.s. If you haven’t read the speech, it’s well worth it: http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf

Curtain Raiser

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Good morning Tash Appreciators,

After an extended break, TF has reopened for business refreshed, reinvigorated and ready to raise the curtain on the next season of Tash Friday.

As this is the season opener, it seems only appropriate to go back to the roots of TF. Although the level of Tash related paraphernalia appears to be cresting a wave of popularity at the moment, that wave has been building for years. Even as far back as the turn of the last century, a Tash was seen as an essential element of what the “ideal man” should look like:

Tash Friday 23:8:13

That’s Eugen Sandow, the man who some people say was the father of modern body building.  He measured Greek sculptures to find the proportions of “The Grecian Ideal” and then lifted weights until he had sculpted himself into the desired shape. At the time this photo was taken (in around the mid 1890s), he was seen as having the ideal male physique. We can only assume, as he was a man that honed his appearance, that he saw his Tash as an essential element of what the ideal man looked like.

These days, we still attempt to sculpt ourselves. Some of us do it literally and work to achieve a desired body shape; while others take a more figurative approach and work until other ambitions are achieved. TF is here to encourage you to keep going and to press on towards those goals.

Back to today, one man who appears to have harnessed the power of the Tash to propel himself to greatness is this guy:

Looks like chicks really do dig him...

Looks like chicks really do dig him…

That’s Lachlan Morton, a 21 year old cyclist who, after starting to rock a Tash last month, has been putting a hurt on his competitors in literally every race he’s ridden . TF has been bike-heavy of late (and many of you have made your views on that clear) but, on this occasion, I make no apologies for including Mr Morton. The reason for that is the recent addition to his race-bike:

Tour of Utah, 2013
When he appeared at the start line with this first licence plate (he’s been using a couple in recent weeks), he raised a few eyebrows and I’m sure some saw it as a pretty arrogant move. However, not only does he not take himself too seriously, he knew something that his competitors didn’t: that he’d worked harder than them in the run-up to the race and that he was able to beat them; which he promptly did, all on his own.

That, fellow Appreciators, is  how it’s done. Hard work, and the confidence which comes with it, can be big factors in whether we are able to achieve our goals. One can imagine the reaction Eugen Sandow received when  the people of Victorian England saw that he was lifting weights in order to look like Greek sculptures! I suspect his response was the same as Lachlan’s – “I’ll show ’em…”

Have a great weekend folks!

#keepgoing

Grow the roses

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Good morning Tash Appreciators,

This week, I had the great pleasure of catching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on TV. Even though it was released in 1968, it has lost none of its appeal:

Tash Friday 12:7:13

The film fits in with just about everything which TF stands for (with the obvious exception of the state-sponsored abductor of children). It starts with a man who is faced with the cold reality of life: his inventions, although brilliant, aren’t paying the bills or allowing him to give his kids the things he wants them to have. He’s told that he needs to stop dreaming and do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. In the end though, all of his dreams come true.

I could go on for ages about the different messages which I think stem from the film. However, I will skip the lecture on how it illustrates the point that, no matter how downtrodden they are, young folk will always prevail. In my opinion, the most important message comes from a group of imprisoned inventors who have been tasked with building a car as good as Chitty: from the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success:

It’s a theme that runs through the whole film. For example, as the opening credits roll, the car which will later become Chitty  goes on fire and is destroyed. The leading man’s life is a bit of a disaster too. His wife (he’s wearing a wedding ring) is, for whatever reason, no longer part of the family and his home and career are a wreck. It’s only by sheer bloody-mindedness that he perseveres and succeeds. The inventors’ song tell us exactly why he carries on:

When it gets distressing it’s a blessing!
Onward and upward you must press!
Yes, Yes!
Till up from the ashes, up from the ashes, grow the roses of success.

This only occurred to me as I watching it, but literally 90% of the male cast has a Tash. It’s therefore hard to choose just one for this week’s TF. The spies and Baron Bomburst, for example, are particularly funny. However, Grandpa Potts wins it both because of this role in the “Grow The Roses” hymn but also because of the line:

“Never say “no” to adventures. Always say “yes”; otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life.”

Tash Friday 12:7:13 3

It just doesn’t get any better.

Have a fantastic weekend folks!

Keep going!

I ain’t got no worries

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Hey now Tash Appreciators

I was able to finally watch the decider of the NBA Finals this week. It was a close game and LeBron James of the Miami Heat was on top-form. In the end, The Heat were victorious.

I understand from those more knowledgeable than I, that James is one of the top basketball players of his generation. He can apparently sink jump shots even when he’s off-balance when his feet leave the ground. Some go as far as to say that he ‘balls (i.e. plays [basket]ball) so hard that people want to fine him. Lucky for him, first they have to find him.

James was the Most Valuable Player of the Finals:

Tash Friday 5:7:13 1

As good as he is, James doesn’t always have the support of basketball fans. There seem to be various reasons for this, ranging from the way he left his previous team to him getting too much praise from the media.

In an interview after the decider, when he had been crowned Most Valuable Player and also a league champion (a video of which is on the TF Facebook and twitter page #shamelessplug), James is asked about how he plays and what he thinks about people who boo him from the sidelines. He said this:

“Listen, for me, I can’t worry about what everybody say about me. I’m LeBron James, from Akron, Ohio. From the inner city. I’m not even supposed to be here. That’s enough.

Every night I walk into the locker room I see a No. 6 with ‘James’ on the back. I’m blessed. So what everybody say about me off the court don’t matter.

I ain’t got no worries!”

It’s the last part that I really enjoyed. You can see in his eyes that, at that moment, he really means it: he is totally comfortable with who he is and what he does. In my view, you don’t need to be a superstar basketball player to have that attitude and find that peace of mind. He’s just a man doing what he enjoys and, in his words, “that’s enough”.

Often we – and I’m talking really about younger folk, here – get hung up on what we stand for; what we are defined as; what we put on our Facebook/LinkedIn pages as our profession. I put it to you that if we just concentrated on putting our all into everything we do (regardless of what that is), we’d be free of worries too.

I know what you’re thinking – has LeBron rocked a Tash? Has he ever! A cracking effort, actually:

Tash Friday 5:7:13 2

Just to finish this week, there’s another man who knew the value of being satisfied with life, on the basis that he did things his way. I believe he said: “what is a man [or woman!]; what has he got? If not himself, then he has nought”:

Tash Friday 5:7:13 3

Both Frank and LeBron can’t be wrong: just work hard, do it your way and all will be well.

Have a fantastic weekend folks!

Keep going!

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Redemption squared

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Salut Tash Appreciators,

With the Tour de France starting in Corsica tomorrow, cycling is our starting and ending point this week:

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Courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrk_andrsn/

Although that picture includes four world-class riders, it wasn’t taken in France, or anywhere with a particular culture of cycling. It was actually taken during the UK National Road Race last Sunday, which took place in Glasgow.

The front chap, in blue, is David Millar – Scotland’s top road cyclist. Some of you may have heard of him because of his “colourful” past as an ex-doper. He was caught, banned and almost jailed for his part in the doping culture of early 2000s. But since then, he has done more than anyone else in cycling to make/keep it clean. He always been proud of his Scottish background but Sunday seemed to have a special significance for him. You could tell that not only from his performance (which was superb) but also from the tweets he posted after the race:

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There are, as I see it, similarities between Millar and the city he was racing in: both have had a rough time and both looked like their best days were behind them. However, like Millar, Glasgow did itself proud on Sunday. The race itself was fantastic: it was well organised and well supported. But it also seems to have been good for other people too. For a start, it prompted the Council to fix the roads in the centre of town, which is a big deal for the drivers of Glasgow. Not only that, but the Council has carried on with the work and other roads are now being improved. It also got people excited about a sport which is growing in Scotland. I’ve heard stories of customers chatting about the race in shops, and if Instagram and Facebook are anything to go by, many folk who had no interest in cycling enjoyed it almost as much as the sad acts (like me) who watched it from beginning to end.

There are plenty of other things going on in the city at the moment too: the east end is more or less being re-developed for the Commonwealth Games; Strathclyde University is building what seems to be a new campus in the middle of town; and many of the huge tower blocks are being demolished to make way for more sociable social housing. If you look to the east of the country, the new forth crossing (have they picked a name for that yet?) is growing out of the depths at an impressive rate and on an impressive scale and if you look north Aberdeen seems to be booming.

We haven’t had a really positive message from TF for a few weeks now, primarily because there hasn’t seemed to be a lot to be positive about. However, that makes it all the sweeter when you look around and see things improving.

So, to the Tash. Unfortunately, Dave Millar appears to have never rocked a Tash. However, there’s a cyclist who will hopefully be on your screens for the next three weeks who does. I saw him riding in the Giro a few weeks ago and made a quick note of his name. Ladies and gents, this chap must be the happiest looking man ever to ride the Tour, Jose Perez:
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Have a fantastic weekend folks!
Keep going!
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We could be heroes

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Hello Tash Appreciators,

This will be the second to last TF of what is, incredibly, Tash Friday’s second year.

Earlier this week, I had a look back at what I said around this time last year. As some of you may recall, last year’s festive TFs looked at Christmases Past, Present and Future.

In the final TF of 2011, I said this:

With the Tash of Christmas Future, I hope that we can all look ahead to the things that can be achieved or, more excitingly, attempted. After all, it is only by pushing ourselves beyond what we perceive as our capabilities that we can really test our mettle. It’s also at these times that we tend to find that we are capable of doing more, and going further, than we thought possible.

If you look back at 2012 you can see numerous examples of people who did just that:

Closer to home, 2012 has seen numerous new jobs (100% decrease in unemployment among Tash Appreciators); new houses; exotic holidays; an engagement or two; weddings; and what would appear to be, in the main, relative contentment.Friday morning rhetoric about getting stuck in, aiming higher than just an “acceptable” level and about life being too short is one thing but it looks very much like this year exceeded expectations. If we had sat down a year ago, and recorded our hopes for the year, would we have thought ourselves too ambitious by suggesting that all of the above would happen? Yes, is probably the answer.

The question we therefore have to ask ourselves is: what’s next?

We must be ambitious, enthusiastic, vigorous and determined. The coming year will not bring financial prosperity for the nation or even, dare I say it, any indication that we’re on the right track towards it. However, this year has shown we can do just fine; even in times of relative hardship. Onwards and upwards must be our battle-cry!

So that leaves us with this week’s Tash. Serendipitously, Bowie just faded into my earphones and so, with the words “just for one day…” ringing in my ears, I leave you with this week’s Tash (from the excellent movie The Prestige), David Bowie:

See you next week for the end of year/world edition…Cheers.